University of Michigan Law School

Do Michigan Law Men Have Thin, Saggy Skins?

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You have to hand it to the University of Michigan Law School. They always keep it interesting in Ann Arbor.

Today’s tale of wacky wolverines arises out of the law school’s “Mr. Wolverine” beauty pageant. Yeah, it sounds like exactly what it is. It’s a nice little event where Michigan men “dress down” for the amusement of their peers, with proceeds going to charity.

You’d like to think that a law school could pull one of these things off without turmoil, but this is Michigan. After the event, the student newspaper, Res Gestae, ran a review of the pageant authored by Chaka Laguerre. Laguerre is a Michigan Law student and a former Miss Jamaica World.

Laguerre’s review was a little bit snarky. And for reasons passing understanding, people got so pissed about it that the paper took the review down, and the Michigan listserv went nuts.

You’ve gotta love Michigan….

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Closing the Loop on the Crowdsourced Law School Rankings

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Last week we told you that The Conglomerate was crowdsourcing a set of law school rankings. It called upon participants to make head-to-head comparisons between different law schools, then crunched the numbers to produce overall rankings.

We covered the early returns, in which Stanford was leading, with Yale in second place. Then came the University of Michigan, followed by Harvard.

But those were just preliminary tallies. Now the final results are in, and you can check them out here. Professor Gordon Smith of The Conglomerate reports that 6,100 people cast over 300,000 votes.

At the top, there are not many differences from the U.S. News law school rankings….

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Quote of the Day: Is Educational Pedigree Overrated?

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When you read the accounts of recruiters at these firms, you get a sense of why they might choose these metrics. They have multiple stacks of resumes. They meet hundreds of applicants at career fairs. Rather than scrutinizing anyone’s resume it’s easier just to limit the pool to the top three or four universities.

Do you really want to pore over the transcript of that kid from the University of Michigan? Wouldn’t it be easier just to call the Harvard grad? In essence, what they’re assuming is that the admissions offices at the super-elite schools have already picked the best of the best. Why second guess them?

— Tom Bartlett of the Chronicle of Higher Education, writing about a paper by Lauren Rivera, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, entitled “Ivies, Extracurriculars, and Exclusion: Credentialism in Elite Labor Markets.”

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Congratulations to the 2011 Skadden Fellows

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Biglaw isn’t all about high-stakes mergers and bet-the-company litigation. Many Biglaw firms take their commitment to pro bono very seriously. Obviously, these firms need to pay the bills, first and foremost. But when they can, many firms do try to give back.

As many of you already know, Skadden takes that commitment quite a bit further, with its Skadden Fellows program. We highlight this worthy program every year. The Skadden Fellowships are for law school graduates who want to devote their lives to public service, and the firm makes a major financial commitment to its fellows. From the Skadden Fellows website:

Fellowships are awarded for two years. Skadden provides each Fellow with a salary and pays all fringe benefits to which an employee of the sponsoring organization would be entitled. For those Fellows not covered by a law school low income protection plan, the firm will pay a Fellow’s law school debt service for the tuition part of the loan for the duration of the fellowship. The 2011 class of Fellows brings to 620 the number of academically outstanding law school graduates and judicial clerks the firm has funded to work full-time for legal and advocacy organizations.

It’s a sweet gig if you can get it.

And if you take a look at the list of Fellows — perhaps you know some of them? — you’ll notice that quite a few of them attend the top law schools in the country….

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Michigan Law Tells Its 3Ls They’re Screwed; Offers Counseling

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While there are students enjoying the good life as summer associates, many rising 3Ls are staring into the abyss of entering 3L recruiting without a post-graduate job lined up. At the University of Michigan Law School, the office of career services is preparing students for just how abysmal the abyss is going to be:

As you look at the employers coming to campus to interview 3Ls, some of you may be feeling quite frustrated at the number of employers willing to interview you as a 3L when there were far more willing to interview you when you were a 2L. Unfortunately, in the next few weeks there may be even more firms that cancel or reduce the number of interview slots they want reserved for 3Ls.

Welcome to “the suck,” my friends. I hope you brought your BFG…

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We Knew This Was Going to Happen: Michigan Encourages Law Grads to go to India

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Is this a “terrible job” or “the inevitable future of the legal economy”? Note: those two answers aren’t mutually exclusive.

The University of Michigan Law School — the 9th-best law school in America — is now posting job opportunities from India.

Has it really gotten bad enough that graduates from a top law school should consider international LPO opportunities? Yes, yes it has….

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Quote of the Day: Required Reading

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Students are expected to become completely familiar with and prepared to discuss in class the blog “Above the Law.”

– From the description for “Law Firms and Legal Careers,” a University of Michigan Law course taught by Kirkland & Ellis of counsel Karl Lutz

UPDATE / CORRECTION: According to Lutz, the course description on the Michigan Law website was doctored to include this sentence, which was not supposed to appear in the description. For more details, see here.

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An Explosive Federalist Society Lunch at Michigan Law?
And another scatological law school tale at UT.

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You’d think those in the law would know by now not to send out embarrassing emails. But a Federalist Society officer at the University of Michigan Law School, whose name we’ve replaced with a pseudonym, seems oblivious. Apparently, Fed Soc served up some E-coli tainted lettuce at a recent lunch:

Subject: [lawopen] Fed Soc Lunch/ e. coli “episode”
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:39:35 -0400
To: [Unofficial Law Listserv]

Hi Law Open,

The Federalist Society would like to extend an apology to anyone who had to experience the wrath of uncooked Pancheros over the last few days. I am among the many victims, spending three days in agony in the bathroom…. (TMI?)

Hope you all feel better!

Best,
WOLVERINE WITH DIARRHEA (OF THE MOUTH)
Federalist Society Vice President

“TMI?” Yes. Yes, it is.

Another scatological tale from UT Law, after the jump. Someone truly thinks the place is a third tier “toilet”…

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Michigan Law Secret Society Openly Mocked

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It’s been a while since we’ve had a good, hard laugh at the expense of Michigan law students. As the recession took hold, Michigan students stopped stealing sandwiches and cell phones.

So maybe the latest spate of on-campus douchebaggery at Michigan is a sign that economy is picking back up? Or maybe it’s simply another example of 1Ls who think law school is College 2.0? A tipster reports:

A secret society has been formed by the rich, straight, white men at Michigan Law, apparently because it’s so difficult to find people like that in the Law School. It appears to be a bastardized version of the old Barrister’s Society. Hostility has been high towards the group of ~20 1Ls, and will probably increase with the leaking of internal memos….

Also, Thursday night they put sheets on our residential building roofs. The biggest problem was that nobody could figure out that the weird scrawling was meant to be a stylized “B”. People were milling about and one could hear “I think that’s an M” “I think that one’s an “IS.” The Barristers don’t have great penmanship.

Yeah, we’ve got leaked memos, and art! And if you caught 30 Rock this week, you should know that these guys are not nearly as cool as Twig and Plums …

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Attractive People May or May Not Be Better Lawyers, But They Do Get Paid More

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Earlier this month, your Above the Law editors had a little debate about whether attractive people make better lawyers. Apparently a couple of economists asked a similar question a decade ago. Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh published a paper in the Journal of Labor Economics in 1998 titled Beauty, Productivity, and Discrimination: Lawyers’ Looks and Lucre.

Gavel bang to University of Florida law professor Daniel Sokol, for pointing us in the direction of the article. It’s a fascinating read. We learned that:

* lawyers in the private sector are more attractive than those in the public sector;
* ugly looks-challenged people clerk;
* litigators are the most attractive attorneys, and that regulatory lawyers are the least attractive.
* being really, really, super good-looking makes men more likely to become partners, but makes women less likely to become partners; and
* attractive lawyers bill at higher rates and make more money.

The economists looked at law school graduates from the 1970s and 1980s. They created a control group by focusing on the graduates from just one law school, referred to as “Law School X” in the paper: “a highly selective institution that has typically matriculated and graduated between 300 and 400 students each year.”

We spoke to Professor Hamermesh this week about his research into how being hot helps lawyers’ careers. It’s not hiring partners who are solely to blame for this, though. The selective pressure comes from lawyers’ clients. Hamermesh shared his insights, and also revealed to us which law school provided his lovely guinea pigs…

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